Amy's Knock-Off

I made the filling tonight for another round of pirozhki. As I said before, I was going for a knock-off version of the Amy's Roasted Vegetable Pizza topping. I think it was pretty successful!

"Amy's" Roasted Vegetable Pizza Topping

Ingredients:

8 small onions (I did 7 yellow, 1 red)
2-3 T oil (I used sunflower)
1/4 c nice balsamic vinegar
Salt to taste
2 roasted red peppers (make your own if you like, I used jarred ones)
About 4 artichoke hearts (frozen, canned, bottled, fresh cooked)*
1 1/2 cups of shiitake or oyster mushrooms (I used oyster)

*I didn't read the can on mine that carefully, turns out I actually bought artichoke bottoms. Also tasty, and much less expensive.

Method:

Caramelize the onions. When done caramelizing, deglaze the pan/pot with balsamic vinegar. Remove from heat. Chop the mushrooms, stir them into the onions. At this point: if you're going to use this for pizza, I suggest spreading this mix over your pizza crust, and then topping with strips of pepper and whole artichoke hearts (you may want to use more of them in this case). If you're going to use it to stuff a sandwich/pirozhki, or even to mix with pasta: chop the artichokes and the peppers slightly larger than the mushrooms and stir it all together. It's ready to go!

Serving Suggestion and Notes: I think this would be really nice on a pizza, or stuffed into a baguette for a quick sandwich. You could also easily use it as a dip at a party. It was tasty and easy! The most time consuming thing is slicing so many onions (and I sliced them pretty fine), and taking the time to caramelize them nicely. But, it is a great thing to make ahead and have around. You could even put it into small containers and freeze for fast use. As far as whether or not this tastes like Amy's version, well, I think it is very similar, but I think hers uses less red pepper. In my version, the red pepper over-dominated a bit. This may also be because her version uses tomatoes and a little lemon juice ... maybe the acidity balances out the pepper and the sweetness of the onions and balsamic vinegar.

Weekend Cooking Project: Healthy Pirozhki

I'm going to make pirozhki again, mostly because I'm crazy in love with that beautiful, yeasty dough, and also because I just plain like bread pockets with stuff inside.

In that vein, my mission is going to be to "duplicate" a certain Amy's product that I've loved for years, but that I think has now been discontinued (not that I get Amy's products here, anyway). That would be the pocket sandwich stuffed with the topping from the Roasted Vegetable Pizza. I don't have shitakes, which are on the ingredient list, and I'm not especially inclined to go out and find them. But I'll work something out.

Mainly, I plan on making the dough itself healthier by using 50% whole wheat flour, 50% white flour and slightly less vegetable oil. I also plan on not relenting to the sad face my BF will put on when he finds out I intend to bake these ones.

So, I'm going to have some that have the "Amy's" filling, some with the carrot and onion stuffing I loved so much last week, and lastly, some dessert ones. The chief reason for making dessert ones is to clean out the jam jars and some of the frozen fruit in my refrigerator. I kind of plan on mixing them all together, and possibly adding some ricotta cheese to the filling, too. We'll see how it turns out. If I'm successful with the "Amy's" one, it'll be a major victory, since those products are so good but very expensive.

I may also try to make paneer, but I'm a bit lazy to do so, since ricotta serves as a fine replacement for the unpressed version.